Isaac said : Chris says
there might have been some vowel pointing from Ezra onward within the texts that they had received
Isaac fried Says : I believe (others too) that the dagesh, the dot within the letter, is not part of the niqud, and has certainly nothing to do with the "doubling" of the consonant.
The dagesh is a vestige of a an ancient system to indicate a vowel. Now it appears following a patah, a qibutz and a xirek, not marked by a yod or a waw.
I don't think the "masoretes" would have dared, being Karaites notwithstanding, put a dot inside (inside!) a sacred letter, this is the doing of an earlier, much higher authority.
The dot in the first letter is to mark the beginning of the word, while the dot in the last letter, the mapik, has a grammatical function
.
I remember something like this from a long time ago, but because it was a distraction from the learning of BH and because back then it was a little over my head I never saved or dug deeper into these things, never thought that it would matter either....that is....until....I met.... Karl
kwrandolph wrote:Chris:
You either willfully ignore, or forget, that the Hebrew that the Masoretes learned in Yeshiva was not Biblical Hebrew, but medieval Hebrew. Medieval Hebrew has a different grammar and many words with different meanings from Biblical Hebrew. And the pointings that the Masoretes employed were for medieval Hebrew, not Biblical Hebrew, which is why, from a Biblical Hebrew standpoint, some of the pointings contradict the written consonantal text.
Therefore, you overrate them as grammarians for Biblical Hebrew.
Karl W. Randolph.
Please Please Karl, for goodness sake, please, this is not anywhere close to what I was saying. I said the following:
What I did say earlier in a thread, if I remember without looking, was that I believe the masoretes had inherited some biblical hebrew pronounciation which would have come down to them in the form of Liturgy, through the synagogue from very earlier on, but that the texts had aramaic and medieval influences in them. I have read a number of documents that quite clearly state that medieval hebrew and aramaic pronounciation is in the texts, but again I also remember reading from the same sources that remnants of BH are to be found in the medieval texts
Let me expand: Evidence from hand written papers and evidence from the Talmud (which I do trust,
by faith, what the authors say) is that in the synagogue and in their shabbat meetings and Holy days, the Torah and the prophets would have maintained to a large degree some of the pronounciation of their ancestors since Ezra, But only in the Liturgical cantations and the public readings.
This is what I am emphasizing NOT to the exclusion of the medieval or aramaic or dialectical influences in the final vowel pointing product that we see today ok? (as a side note, and so sorry to everyone else, no intention to cause controversy, but from an historical perspective Yeshua did actually read in the synagogue a hebrew scroll, not Greek, not Aramaic nor latin, but Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew - so at least we can establish it was still around at 30 AD) and can we not reasonably suggest with some confidence that while Yeshua the man, the preacher, may well have spoken whatever language in conversation, in the synagogue He would have read from Biblical Hebrew, handed down from the previous generations.
After all, look at this way, after approximately 1000 years Karl, despite all the changes in global languages, despite all the movements of peoples and Jews, despite the loss of about 95% of the spoken hebrew through the dispersion of the Jews, despite having no land and no government, despite assimilating and absorbing the Host country's languages, despite the formation and development of modern hebrew, despite the ashkenazi, the saphardic and the yemenite differences - Biblical Hebrew recitation and readings in the synagogue have weathered and resisted every form of change imagineable Karl after 1000 years down to the present day. Is it then such a bad and non scientific piece of reasoning to even contemplate the idea that quite some pronounciation and stabilised structure and consistency was actually put in place for future generations in the days of when Ezra brought back the scrolls from Babylon and the scribes set to work on diligently copying them. Is it so anethema to you Karl that this can not possibly be true? Is it also not possible that the absence of indisputable proof leads scholars to establish a theory based on the absence of this evidence? Despite there actually being clues to this possibility in the scriptural language itself when compared and analysed with thousands of documents non biblical and biblical (which
by faith I believe their comments are trustworthy). This is what some scholars have actually put forward, I have to do a massive search to find this for you, but only if it is worth it? I have no proof, I am not in that position to collate and study and see the originals, neither have I been trained in semitic languages or anything, I am just a learner and non-qualified - no evidence, no back up, no skills or authority. But if it is worth it for you, I will hunt down these documents and comments and post links?
Just to end on a cheery note - Years ago I read about he yemenite hebrew that was discovered. I never saved any of the sources or websites. But on a new search a few days ago I found this interesting document, it has been said by both Rabbis and scholars in Israel (but by gentile biblical scholars I have not read this yet - just to state clear facts) that Yemenite hebrew is a purer form of biblical hebrew, now I don't know about this at all, I have no idea. I simply load the link for anyone's personal interest if they have not seen this before.
http://onthemainline.blogspot.ie/2010/1 ... enite.html